Part 3
If Avignon were to be deprived of her grand Papal Palace, she would still have enough churches and monasteries left to give evidence either of the great popularity her church enjoyed, or of the power wielded in the Middle Ages by the religious orders.
Churches and monasteries are scattered lavishly through the town, and from the rich stores of relics still possessed by them, some slight idea may be gleaned of the wealth they possessed before the terrible Revolution. Everywhere the stranger goes the story is the same. Vergers and guides tell of the past glories of this town: this stood here and that there; here was a monument, there a shrine; but--they vanished in the Revolution.
Terrible were these revolutionists of the South; they gathered their harvests of rich plunder from the Church’s hand with as little concern as a farmer gathers his corn, or as a beggar his rags. Nothing was sacred from their vandal hands, and the tables were turned upon the Church, which in the centuries long gone had taken its heavy toll from all the country round.
What a grotesque picture the Revolution presents! Grim satire on the vanity of riches, the pomp of ceremony and fleetingness of power, and the emptiness of rank. Riches took wings, or rather were carried off on donkeys’ backs to be melted down into coin and turned into bread for hungry mouths. Ceremonies, even the most sacred, were mocked at, and burlesque processions of ecclesiastical pageants excited the ribald laughter of the crowd. The powerful were humbled to the dust, and rank lost its head under the cruel slicing invention of Dr. Guillotin.
The Royalist faction in Avignon had always been associated with the Order of the “White Penitents,” and in the same way the “Black Penitents” had inherited the independence and rebellious spirit that animated the followers of Count Raymond of Toulouse. These rival factions, whose original opposition had been mainly religious, had now become political, and on the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo their differences became more accentuated and violent. The Royalists were in the ascendancy, and they revenged themselves upon their political and religious enemies with all the fanatical fervour of their Southern nature.
The aristocratic and religious party had much to remember. The Glacière massacres of 1791 were perpetrated upon their class, and as in 1795 the Royalist libertines in Paris had indulged in ghastly reprisals against the red-capped revolutionaries, the White Penitents followed in Avignon the fashion set them by the capital. The enforced submission to the restored Bourbon Dynasty in July 1815 aroused the bitterest resentment of the Black Penitents and their followers, just as the restoration of Napoleon had done their opponents earlier in March of the same year.
At Carpentras, about fifteen miles from Avignon, a small garrison of the republicans, who had kept the tricolour floating until July 15, were shot down by the Royalist Volunteers, although they had surrendered. Fanatical crowds of Royalists directed their hatred and anger against the Protestant section of the community.
Vindictive murder and pillage spread all over the country towns and villages. “The White Terror” of 1815 is a thing to remember, or rather to forget. The diabolical outrages of Jourdain were equalled, if not surpassed, by the White Penitent Pointu, the Avignon murderer, a leader of a band as ferocious and bloodthirsty as himself. The military and civil authorities were powerless to check the excesses of the fanatical horde that rode roughshod over law and order, morality, decency, and ordinary human feeling.
Marseilles, Nîmes, Uzès, Avignon, Arles, and Carpentras were all involved in the White Terror, and one can hardly credit the details of the cruel crimes committed. Among the victims to the insensate Royalists was Marshal Brune, passing through on his way from Marseilles to Paris to defend his conduct to the Government. On reaching Avignon he sought out quarters in the Hôtel de la Poste. The news of his arrival had spread along with sinister stories as to his doings during the Revolution of 1789, and a great mob assembled around the hotel, broke in and shot the Marshal in cold blood. His body was on its way to burial when the crowd forced the bearers to change their course and proceed to the river-side, where a wooden bridge spanned the river. From this they threw the body of the Marshal into the silent Rhone. The ribald crowd fired shots into the body as it floated down the
stream, a proceeding which they termed “military honours.” On the arch of the bridge they wrote “The Tomb of Marshal Brune.” The river, however, refused the honour, and after twice being washed ashore, the corpse was taken and buried by two men, who recognised it. The Marshal’s widow, eventually, had the body disinterred and embalmed. At her instigation a public trial was held, at which the memory of the dead man was cleared of the charge of suicide and the body buried at Rioni.
This is one story; a sidelight on the happenings in Beautiful Provence at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
* * * * *
The Papal Palace in Avignon stands steadfast amidst all the changes that have come to the city, for its outward features have successfully resisted the incessant hammerings of time. The work of internal renovation goes steadily on, whilst the white dust raised by the masons, who sing at their work, settles in every conceivable resting-place, much to the discomfort of the inhabitants, especially when the “mistral” sweeps down and drives this dust, like snow, before it. The old motto of the city
“Windy Avignon, liable to plague when it has not the wind and plagued with the wind when it has it,”
still applies, if the plague is interpreted to mean dust.
The inhabitants have been easily moulded by the influence of modernity, and their principal street boasts of electric light and trams. Fashion finds ardent devotees in the provincial town, who worship at her shrine with as much, if not greater, zeal than her votaries in Paris, London, or New York. The café and the restaurant are held in high esteem, and, as in all French towns, occupy an important place in the civil life. The hour ’twixt sundown and the most important of the day, when all Avignon sits around the well-spread dinner tables, is devoted to the cafés; and these clubs of the people, deserted and idle at some hours, are full of joyful life.
On winter evenings the temporary stoves that stand prominently in the middle of these salons are surrounded by cold-footed mortals, who rest their extremities upon the encircling fenders. Friends meet, and seated around marble tables consume café, beer, bright-coloured syrups, and absinthe according to their fancy. Absinthe is still a popular drink throughout Provence, in spite of reasoned appeals from the medical fraternity for its discontinuance. Respectable womenfolk frequent the cafés with their male relatives and friends, and sip sweet sickly syrups with the rest. Excess is rare, almost unheard of. Cards are played, the stakes usually being the cost of the entertainment. During the hour or so before dinner the café is supreme.
The old folk in Avignon are all happy-looking; the men especially are a jolly set of fellows, and although the snow of years falls on their heads and never melts, their hearts are young and warm, secure from Time’s blighting frosts. They have studied the art of living, under their blue skies, and have mastered the difficult business.
The girls and women are particularly well favoured, dark, as becomes their Southern origin, well featured, favouring the Grecian rather than the Roman type. They have less of the imperious self-conscious dignity of their sisters in Spain and other Latin countries, and seem frank and more human and in touch with the life around them. The Church finds in them its chief adherents, faithful still in a country where once everybody believed and few inquired, and now, where few believe and all ask questions. New vistas of thought were opened up in Provence during the Revolution epoch, and ever since the view has widened. In the churches nearly all the little brass plates on the prie-dieu chairs have the prefix Mme. or Mlle. engraved upon them. One seldom comes across Monsieur.
In summer, when the heat of the brilliant day gives place to the lovely glow of the Provençal evening, all Avignon sits outside around the tables that trespass in careless fashion upon the pavements. The gossip of the day goes round amidst unrestrained laughter and merriment. The café on the pavement is as truly a Gallic institution as the “Bullring” is Spanish. Spain carried her “institution” to her remotest colonies, and France has done the same with the café.
The scene on a summer evening in the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville in Avignon is but a repetition on a smaller scale of what may be seen on any evening from one year’s end to the other in the Cannebière at Marseilles, or farther distant still, across the Mediterranean in the Place du Gouvernement in the French city of Algiers.
The Romans introduced their great national institutions for amusement, the amphitheatre and the circus, into nearly all their colonies, no matter how distant, and the modern Gaul has emulated the older and far greater coloniser in this respect. Even on the borders of the Great Desert the outside café is firmly planted amongst a people who boast a longer civilisation than their conquerors--a feat which the Romans found impossible, for the amphitheatre of Rome made no headway amongst the conquered Greeks.
But the Place, with all its gay life upon a summer evening, is not a lasting memory of Avignon. The picture that remains upon the mind is the view from the suspension bridge, just where it reaches the isle of Barthelasse. From this point of vantage Avignon, bathed in the evening glow, assumes a thoroughly mediæval aspect. The dark masses of the Rocks of the Dom, the Cathedral, the Papal Palace, the church spires and belfries are all softened and mellowed in the mystic light of the afterglow in the west, until fancy suggests that the intervening years have, in some subtle way, been bridged over, and the beholder is back in those days when the proud prelates ruled like kings, nay despots, in this fortress town beside the Rhone.
VILLENEUVE
II
VILLENEUVE
The modern approach to the town of Villeneuve passes the Tower of Philip the Fair, a huge square block of masonry, erected early in the fourteenth century on the west bank of the river, at the spot where the old Bridge of St. Benezet reached the shore. The position was such that whoever held this tower had complete command of the bridge, and could render it useless to the inhabitants of Avignon when any conflict arose. Its presence here proves how determined Philip was to have the Papacy under his complete control, and at the time of its construction it was well-nigh impregnable, for it embodied the latest improvements known to the military genius of that day.
Before this period the battlements of fortresses and castles were simply a series of embrasures and merlons with narrow oylets perforating the latter. The engines of war used in laying siege to these buildings were great battering-rams, with iron points, which laboured incessantly at the lower portions of the defences, until a breach sufficiently large to give passage to the attacking party was effected. The defenders’ reply to this mode of attack was to lower cords or chains from the battlements, and with them entangle the battering-ram so as to put it out of action.
The besieging party’s efforts were, therefore, engaged in preventing the defenders from leaning over the parapets; the archers and bowmen directing their arrows and quarrels at any and every head appearing at the embrasures above. Throughout the crusades this was the manner of defence and attack, and an improvement was introduced by a system of covering the battlements with temporary galleries, projecting over and supported upon wooden beams, thrust through holes left for the purpose in the masonry. This gallery was roofed with wood and tiles, whilst the floor had gaps between the planks through which the defenders could let down their ropes and chains or pour molten lead, burning sulphur, stones and other missiles upon the heads of those who advanced to enter breaches in the walls.
But in time a method was discovered of successfully
attacking this device of the defending party. Great catapults, the most ancient of military engines, invented away back in the early classic times, were now employed to hurl barrels of burning tar up on to the temporary wooden shelters, which were soon demolished by this means.
For centuries this method of attack and defence flourished, and it was not until the beginning of the fourteenth century that the machicolated battlements came into existence. From ancient times the old crenellated battlements had served through ages that were engaged in fighting. The ancient Egyptians and Assyrians used them, and it was reserved for the military genius of the Middle Ages to invent the machicolated parapet. This consisted of building out from the main walls of the tower or castle a curtain of masonry, supported by stone brackets. This gave a thorough protection to the besieged, who could look down through the apertures between the corbels and drop their missiles, molten lead, burning sulphur and melted pitch, on to the heads of their assailants.
The Tower of Philip the Fair is built with a machicolated battlement, and over the small doorway there is an “échauguette,” or small projecting tower, which commands the entrance. Even if the besiegers managed to escape the missiles dropped through the floor of the little tower, and forced their way into the porch, their task was not accomplished, for from the roof of the narrow passage leading into the large ground-floor chamber a long chimney runs right up to the top of the tower and down this projectiles could still be dropped.
The tower contains three lofty chambers, one above the other, each of which has a finely vaulted roof, the ribs resting upon fantastically carved corbels. These chambers are in an absolutely perfect state of preservation, a rare thing in a fourteenth-century building in this part of the country. The narrow winding staircase lit by oylets, which betray the thickness of the walls, has at intervals little branch stairways of only a few steps. These give
access to small openings into the shaft that runs from the roof of the porch to the roof of the building.
If for any reason the roof had to be abandoned, the besieged could still command the entrance through these apertures. The top chamber in the tower seems to have been used as a prison at some early time, for it is covered with pathetic inscriptions, cut with such care that they could only have been executed by persons upon whose hands the time hung heavily. One cannot know for certain that they are not the work of a besieged garrison, or the guardians of the tower, but the presence of strong iron bars across the outside of the windows, and other evidences, would indicate that prisoners occupied this tower at some time in its history; and one would think that all these precautions to prevent the escape of a prisoner from this lofty room were hardly necessary: unless indeed the prisoner had a rope or was able to construct a makeshift one out of his clothing, he would be very unlikely to run far after he had dropped from this lofty tower on to the rough rocks below.
The stone seat in one of the deep window embrasures in the second chamber has carved upon it, very neatly, the chequered pattern of a chess-board, the alternate squares being either raised or sunk. A similar “chessstone” appears upon the floor of one of the chambers in the Fort St. André. One can only imagine them to be the work of prisoners, for, however much time the soldiers of the Guard had at their disposal, it is incredible they would have allotted themselves so hard and tedious a task when they could easily obtain a bit of wood to serve their purpose. And yet, who knows? A prolonged siege might have reduced the garrison to its last stick, and the horror of their perilous position may have driven them to seek any diversion to drive away the contemplation of the fate awaiting them.
The Fort of St. André commands not only the town which nestles around its foundations, but the river and the whole of the western side of Avignon.
When Philip forced the miserable Pope Clement V. to settle in France, he anticipated the necessity of keeping a strict watch on the Papal residences, and although the great Palace which now stands in Avignon was not erected till some years after, Philip had the Fort St. André built to keep a guard. It was probably the proximity of this formidable fortress that caused the succeeding Popes to take such care with the fortification of their residence. It was from this fortress that the French troops besieged the Papal Palace when Pierre de Luna set up his pretensions and defended it against all comers.
Two great towers form the entrance to the grounds upon which stood the Abbey of St. André. During the troublous times of the sixteenth century these two towers were used as prisons, and the great Hall on the first floor, the Hall of the Chevaliers, served for a recreation-room. The flagstones of this great bare apartment are covered with inscriptions and devices which, although much worn, show that the prisoners who carved them were educated men of the period. The skill displayed in many of these elaborate devices is all the more remarkable when it is remembered that the only instruments used were the soft pewter spoons the prisoners had for supping soup with. Indications of the prisoners’ thoughts are embodied in the stones. A St. George and the Dragon, a Crucifixion, cannon, Maltese crosses, a figure of Justice, a device emblematic of abundance, skulls and crossbones, form some of the subjects upon which the prisoners tried their spoons and skill; whilst one by a member of the “Carbonari” recalls memories of Silvio Pellico and his moving records of a prisoner’s life.
The venerable heavy doors that lead into these gloomy chambers groan with age each time they turn upon their well-worn hinges; rusty iron bolts creak out the same melancholy discords that many years ago fell upon strained ears and sinking hearts.
The twin towers of the Fortress of St. André remain a most imposing memorial of fourteenth-century military architecture. Standing on a rock, that at one time was an island of the Rhone, the fort commanded the surrounding country to an extent that made its presence a
menace to the neighbourhood. The walls enclose a site upon which a town nestled in calm security, and near by the Monastery or Abbey of St. André, sheltered further by a great belt of pines, rises upon the site of a still more ancient building now passed out of memory.
Its career has been a chequered one, for it has changed owners with a bewildering frequency. After the Revolution it was turned into a military hospital; later it came into the possession of private persons; and in the second decade of the last century it again became a convent, inhabited by nuns. Now, unoccupied, it awaits some fresh development, but who dare prophesy what destiny has in store for it?
The little town beside it is fast tumbling to decay; its dilapidated walls and roofs straggling in irregular confusion up the rocky hillside. Higher up, on one of the topmost knolls of the enclosure, a small ancient chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of Belvezet, stands erect and stern in its simplicity, forsaken and exposed to the mistral’s greatest violence and the sun’s fiercest bleaching rays.
The town of Villeneuve, that lies below the fortress, sadly belies its name, for a more concentrated collection of crumbling ruins could hardly be imagined. The Monastery of the Chartreuse, founded by Innocent VI. in the middle of the fourteenth century (1352), was for more than four hundred years one of the most important and prosperous in Languedoc. The walls enclosing it measure nearly a mile in circumference, and now its ruins form a squalid little town inhabited by over five hundred human beings, to say nothing of the domestic animals.
The walls of its crumbling church are fast disappearing, the roof lets more than daylight in, and what little of it remains affords but a poor shelter for a few rickety, cumbrous, mud-stained carts and piles of faggots stored for winter use.
The Gothic tomb of Innocent VI., the founder and patron of this monastic town (for the Monastery of the Chartreuse was more than a mere cluster of religious buildings), was only removed from this church as lately as 1835, and placed amidst more secure and fitting surroundings, in the Hospice of the town.
This beautiful tomb of Innocent, not unlike that of his predecessor John, in the Cathedral of Avignon, suffered more shameful treatment at the hands of the demoralised mobs of the first Republic. For years it lay neglected, amidst accumulating mounds of degrading filth that threatened to engulf it; till during the reign of Louis Philippe, when the fires of the Revolution had died down, attention was directed to the ancient monuments of the country, and amongst other things it was discovered that this once beautiful and dignified tomb was being used by some ingenious and impious person as a rabbit hutch. Time’s revenges are indeed bitter, but its healing power is none the less merciful, and to-day the tomb receives the homage of pilgrims actuated by more varied motives than those of former ages.
Some idea of the enormous power of Monachism, and the attraction it had for all classes in the Middle Ages, can be derived from the contemplation of even the ruins of these institutions in the Southern countries where they flourished.
At the close of the thirteenth and all through the following century the Monastery and Convent reached the highest developments. The primitive hermits, who lived in bare seclusion, depriving themselves wilfully of all but the essentials of existence, were not only fifteen centuries removed from the powerful and luxurious monks of the Middle Ages, in point of time; they are for ever unrelated to them in their methods of existence. The gradual stages in the evolution of the monastic idea melt into each other almost imperceptibly. From St. Anthony to the Monastery of Villeneuve is a far cry, and the anchorite of Thebes would have found it difficult to recognise in the monachism of later years the spirit that controlled his life.
Instead of the rough cave of nature’s carving, a succession of chapels richly decorated by the hands of accomplished artists, whose talents were controlled by monastic wealth, cloisters with carvings that only practical
and well-paid sculptors could achieve, galleries, chapter-houses, refectories, gardens, kitchens, stables, wine-cellars, all contributed to the enjoyment of the occupants. The worldly prosperity of the institution continued right down until the Revolution relieved it of its wealth and robbed it of its power. There was no lingering period of decay, but a sudden lightning stroke put an end to the Monastery of the Chartreuse.